Oppa, Gangnam Style!

Eight years ago, seventy-six poets joined us in a project that aimed to make it easy for K-5 teachers to share poetry with their students for five minutes each Friday. That was 2012, the year we created The Poetry Friday Anthology K-5. One edition of the book was designed to help teachers integrate poetry lessons with the CCSS (Common Core State Standards). Another edition of the book focused on the TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills).

Immediately after these books came out, middle school teachers and librarians asked us to create middle school versions. In 2013, we published The Poetry Friday Anthology for Middle School, again with one CCSS edition and one Texas TEKS edition.

To give you some context, the hit song in 2012 was "Gangnam Style." In 2013, the second Hunger Games movie, "Catching Fire," had just been released. That was the year that Beyonce admitted to lip-synching the national anthem at President Obama's inauguration. (We still loved it, anyway.) It feels like such a long time ago, doesn't it?

That's how we're feeling now about those books with the big sun on the cover. We love them, but they remind us of a time that has passed. Many states have left the CCSS behind, moving from the Common Core to standards that might still be very similar but have different names and code numbers) or fewer standards overall (which we think is a good thing). The Poetry TEKS are still in full force, but have been slightly revised since 2012. And so we believe it's time to say goodbye to those books. May 31, 2020 will be the last day of their availability on Amazon. You might be able to find them during the summer at QEPBooks.com or some of our other distributors or independent booksellers, but probably not for long after that.

The good news is that we're going to keep on publishing and promoting our other books in The Poetry Friday Anthology series, and in the Poetry Friday Power Book series, and also our title for administrators, GREAT Morning! Poems for School Leaders to Read Aloud.

Here's a summary, in case any of these books are new to you:

The Poetry Friday Anthology for Science is an NSTA Recommends book that comes in two editions: a K-5 Teacher/Librarian Edition and an illustrated student edition with extra bonus poems, The Poetry of Science. A STEM poem from these books is featured monthly in our column in the NSTA elementary journal Science and Children, along with a Take 5! mini-lesson that gives teachers and librarians a quick ready-made presentation on a STEM topic such as lab safety or ecosystems or 3-D printing.

The Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations, an ILA Notable Book for a Global Society, is available in both Teacher/Librarian and Student editions. A neat feature: you'll find a picture book pairing (recommendation) for each of the 150+ poems in the book. And each of the poems is presented in both English and Spanish versions. If you don't want to share the Spanish versions, you can ignore them; but if you want to highlight some of them by playing audio readings by award-winning writer David Bowles and some of his UTRGV students, listen for free at SoundCloud. https://soundcloud.com/user-862117714/sets/bilingual-performances

Moving onto our Poetry Friday Power Book series, which focuses on building the reading-writing connection and playing with words: 

You Just Wait, an NCTE Poetry Notable, is an interactive writing journal that weaves 12 anchor poems (by poets such as Margarita Engle and Joseph Bruchac) together with 24 poems by Janet Wong, told in the voices of three teen characters: Paz, a star soccer player; Joe, a basketball player with limited skills but big dreams; and Lucesita, who loves movies and food.

Here We Go, an NCTE Poetry Notable and an NNSTOY Social Justice Book, is an interactive writing journal with anchor poets that include Naomi Shihab Nye and David Bowles. Janet Wong created 4 characters for this book, children who want to change the world—starting with a food drive, walkathon, and school garden.

Pet Crazy, for youngest readers and writers, includes anchor poets Laura Shovan and Padma Venkatraman and 3 characters created by Janet Wong: Kristy, who loves cats; Ben, who wishes he could have a dog; and Daniel, who loves all animals but doesn't feel a need to own a pet. This book has a Hidden Language Skills section with poetry and general language skills (such as capitalization and spelling).

Finally, create a school culture of positivity with the morning announcement poems-- and Did You Know? Intros-- found in GREAT Morning! Poems for School Leaders to Read Aloud, featuring well-known poets such as Carole Boston Weatherford and Jack Prelutsky, newer poets such as Traci Sorell and Xelena Gonzalez, and educators who are poets, too, such as Carol Varsalona and Catherine Flynn.

PHEW! That was a lot of information, we know. So visit this blog again next week for an additional very exciting piece of news! A big Poetry Friday THANK YOU to all the poets who took a risk with us on those very first books and all the teachers and librarians who have used, loved, and shared those books. We hope they have helped you infuse more poetry into your routine, build your confidence with strategies for sharing poetry, and gotten the young people you love excited about poetry!

Now, it's time for more Poetry Friday fun! The lovely Laura Purdie Salas is hosting all our postings today, so go there now!